Gregor Townsend was disappointed with Scotland’s 20-17 Guinness Six Nations defeat to Wales at Principality Stadium as Scotland could not end their Cardiff hoodoo.
Scotland led 11-6 after Darcy Graham acrobatically finished in the corner and Finn Russell’s two penalties, but they were pulled back by Wales before half-time, as Tomas Francis dotted down from the back of a driving maul, the teams going in at 14-14.
The second half proved to be very difficult for either side to break through, and in the end Scotland could only muster one Russell penalty ten minutes into the second half. That was cancelled out by Dan Biggar, who then slotted a drop goal on 70 minutes which proved to be enough to separate the two teams.
Townsend was frustrated with the result, and the fact that his men were unable to convert their lead into a rare Cardiff victory – their last coming when he was still a player back in 2002.
He said: “There’s big frustration and big disappointment, particularly when we went ahead and then failed to kick on.
“We didn’t play as well as we should have done and that’s down to the opposition.
“Our performance had to be better in the last 20 minutes, we expected to kick on and we didn’t.”
Scotland have not won at Principality Stadium since 2002, and came into this game with hope that they could end that run.
But despite a good start, they once again saw Wales take control in front of a packed crowd.
In response to what Scotland need to do to change that, Townsend replied: “The obvious answer is to score more points than the opposition and that’s what we should have done today.”
Scotland captain Stuart Hogg echoed his coach’s thoughts in what proved to be a frustrating afternoon for them.
He said: “I think we’ve given them too easy an avenue into the game with cheap penalties and cheap knock-ons.
“It’s a bitterly disappointed changing room and we have to wait two weeks now to get another shot at it.”
“Wales didn’t really have to work hard for their field position, we gave that to them, errors happen, but when they’re compounded that’s when it gets frustrating.”
Scotland were bidding to win their opening two matches of the Guinness Six Nations for the first time after defeating England 20-17 at BT Murrayfield.
When Townsend was asked what the difference was between disappointment this week and the ecstasy of a week ago in Edinburgh, he believed it was down to small margins.
He said: “There wasn’t a huge amount of differences between the two matches to be honest, we have to control what we can control.
“There were big moments in the second half that we didn’t execute. We needed to kick-on and we didn’t manage to do that.”
